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  • As people get desensitized to the same types of attacks,

  • there's incentive to try something new: using tactics,

  • new weapons, new targets

  • and, in this case, we have this live-streaming.”

  • Facebook and Twitter frantically trying to pull this down.

  • I think that was part of the panic

  • that this person wanted to inspire,

  • and that is a different dimension than one

  • that we've seen previously.”

  • And, of course, that heightens the drama of the events.

  • It also heightens the worldwide interest

  • in a case such as this, which is

  • exactly what the perpetrator wants.”

  • Terrorism needs an audience. Without the message

  • alongside the violence,

  • it's not terrorism.”

  • They want the world to know why they're

  • doing what they're doing.”

  • Having that live audience there with them

  • and seeing the messages coming through

  • might have been one way of sort

  • of sustaining his motivation right the way through.”

  • There have been multiple murders, suicides,

  • sexual assaults that have been live-streamed on Facebook.

  • And the real concern, especially when you're

  • looking at a mass shooting, a mass atrocity,

  • is the social contagion aspect of it.”

  • This is a way, in a sense, to use the social media

  • to transmit an extremist virus throughout the global sphere.”

  • It is to cause more turmoil after their attacks, try

  • to attract more people to doing similar type of things.”

  • But the other sense of the contagion

  • is also just the secondary trauma

  • that this is going to subject anybody who sees it to.

  • A kid can witness things that a person who might have

  • fought in a war would have never seen.”

  • This law that we have, Section 230 of the Communications Decency

  • Act, pretty much carves out this immunity for the tech

  • industry that the only parallel I

  • can see to it in any other sense

  • is the firearms industry.

  • So, with both of those industries,

  • we have engaged in the same rhetoric that says,

  • You have neutral tools and we're not

  • going to hold you accountable, even

  • for the most atrocious and predictable things

  • that people will do with your tools.”

  • Terrorism is a sort of a public health problem, right?

  • If there's organizations or industries

  • that are contributing to a public health problem,

  • typically they end up getting regulated

  • and they end up getting fined if they

  • step outside of those regulations that

  • have been set up.

  • And I think that this particular space

  • should be treated no differently

  • than anything else that's causing public health problems.”

  • But it's going to take a political will

  • to make a difference in terms of the mass murders.

  • It's going to take a corporate conscience that

  • says that the control of the social media propagation

  • is as important as the bottom line.”

As people get desensitized to the same types of attacks,

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